Origen of Alexandria

What then does the Lord say to Abraham? “Where,” the text reads, “is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “Lo, she is in the tent.” But the Lord said, “I will certainly come to you at this time in due season, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” But Sarah, standing behind the door of the tent behind Abraham, heard.Let the wives learn from the examples of the patriarchs; let the wives learn, I say, to follow their husbands. For not without cause is it written that “Sarah was standing behind Abraham,” but that it might be shown that if the husband leads the way to the Lord, the wife ought to follow. I mean that the wife ought to follow if she sees her husband standing by God.…
But we can also perceive something mystical in this passage if we see how in Exodus “God went before them by night in a pillar of fire and by day in a pillar of a cloud” and the congregation of the Lord followed behind him.
So therefore I understand also Sarah to have followed or stood “behind Abraham.”
What is said next? “And they were both,” the text says, “presbyters”—that is, old—“and far advanced in their days.”
So far as pertains to bodily age, many before them lived for more numerous years, but no one was called presbyter. It appears that this title is ascribed to the saints not by reason of longevity but of maturity.

These are the words of the divine Scripture. Let us see, therefore, now what is fitting to be understood in them. "I have descended," the text says, "to see." When responses are delivered to Abraham, God is not said to descend but to stand before him, as we explained above: "Three men," the text says, "stood before him." But now, because sinners are involved, God is said to descend. Beware lest you think of ascending and descending spatially. For this is frequently found in the sacred literature, as in the prophet Micah: "Behold," Scripture says, "the Lord departed from his holy place and came down and will tread upon the high places of the earth." Therefore God is said to descend when he deigns to have concern for human frailty. This should be discerned especially of our Lord and Savior, who "thought it not robbery to be equal with God but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." Therefore he descended. For "no other has ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven." For the Lord descended not only to care for us but also to bear these things that are ours. "For he took the form of a servant," and although he himself is invisible in nature, inasmuch as he is equal to the Father, nevertheless he took a visible appearance "and was found in appearance as a man." But also when he descends he is below with some, but he ascends with others and is above. For he goes up with the chosen apostles "into a high mountain and there is transfigured before them." Therefore he is above with those whom he teaches about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But he is below with the crowds and Pharisees, whose sins he reproaches, and he is there with them.… He could not, however, be transfigured below, but he ascended above with those who could follow him, and there he is transfigured.

When the angels who were sent to destroy Sodom desired to expedite the task with which they were charged, they first had concern for their host, Lot, that, in consideration of his hospitality, they might deliver him from the destruction of the imminent fire.Hear these words, you who close your houses to strangers; hear these words, you who avoid a guest as an enemy. Lot was living in Sodom. We do not read of other good deeds of his. The hospitality alone occurring at that time is mentioned. He escapes the flames, he escapes the conflagration for this reason alone: because he opened his house to strangers. Angels entered the hospitable house; fire entered the houses closed to strangers.
Let us therefore see what the angels say to their host on account of his services of hospitality. “Save your life in the mountain,” the text says, “lest perchance you be included.” Lot was indeed hospitable. And, as the Scripture has borne testimony to him, he was hidden from destruction when the angels had been hospitably received. But he was not so perfect that immediately on departing from Sodom, he could ascend the mountain; for it belongs to the perfect to say, “I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence help shall come to me.” He therefore was neither such that he should perish among the inhabitants of Sodom, nor was he so great that he could dwell with Abraham in the heights. For if he had been such, Abraham would never have said to him, “If you go to the right, I will go to the left, or if you go to the left I will go to the right,” nor would the dwellings of Sodom have pleased him. He was therefore somewhere in the middle between the perfect and the doomed. And knowing that it is not appropriate with his strength to ascend the mountain, he piously and humbly excuses himself saying, “I cannot be saved on the mountain, but, behold, this city is small. Here I shall be saved; and it is not small?” To be sure, when he entered the small city of Zoar he is saved in it. And after this he went up into the mountain with his daughters.
For there was no possibility of ascending from Sodom into the mountain, although it is written of the land of Sodom before it was overthrown, in that time when Lot chose it as his dwelling place, that “it was as the paradise of God and as the land of Egypt.” And yet, to digress slightly, what similarity does there appear to be with the paradise of God and the land of Egypt that Sodom should be compared fittingly with these? Now I think it is in this way: before Sodom sinned, when it still preserved the simplicity of the unstained life, it was “as the paradise of God,” but when it began to be discolored and to be darkened with the stains of sins it became “as the land of Egypt.”
But since indeed the prophet says, “Your sister Sodom shall be restored to her ancient state,” we inquire also whether her restoration also recovers this, that she be “as the paradise of God” or only “as the land of Egypt.” I, at least, doubt if the sins of Sodom can be diminished to such an extent and its evils purged to the point that its restoration be so great that it be compared not only with the land of Egypt but also with the paradise of God. Those, however, who wish to establish this will press us especially from that word that appears added to this counterpromise. For the Scripture did not say “Sodom will be restored,” and stop, but it says, “Sodom will be restored to its ancient state.” And they will assert strongly that its ancient state was not “as the land of Egypt” but “as the paradise of God.”

But let us return to Lot, who, fleeing the destruction of Sodom with his wife and daughters after he had received the command from the angels to not look back, was proceeding to Zoar. But his wife became negligent of the command. “She looked back”; she violated the imposed law; “she became a little statue of salt.” Do we think there was so much evil in this transgression, that the woman, because she looked behind her, incurred the destruction that she appeared to be fleeing by divine favor? For what great crime was it, if the concerned mind of the woman looked backward whence she was being terrified by the excessive crackling of the flames?But because “the law is spiritual” and the things that happened to the ancients “happened figuratively,” let us see if perhaps Lot, who did not look back, is not the rational understanding and the courageous soul, and his wife here represents the flesh. For it is the flesh which always looks to vices; when the soul is proceeding to salvation, the flesh looks backward and seeks after pleasures. For concerning that the Lord also said, “No man putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And he adds, “Remember Lot’s wife.” But the fact that “she became a little statue of salt” appears to be an open indication of her folly. For salt represents the prudence which she lacked.
Lot therefore pushed on to Zoar. After he had gained strength there for a while, which he could not have in Sodom, he ascended the mountain and dwelt there, as the Scripture says, “he and his two daughters with him.”

After these things now that well-known story is related in which it is written that Lot’s daughters cunningly lay with their father by stealth. In this matter I do not know if anyone can so excuse Lot as to free him from sin. Nor again do I think he should be so accused that he ought to become party to such serious incest. For I do not find him to have plotted against or to have violently snatched away the chastity of his daughters but rather to have been the victim of a plot and cunningly ensnared. But neither would he have been ensnared by the girls unless he could have been inebriated. Thus he seems to me to be found partly culpable and partly excusable. For indeed he can be excused because he is free of the offense of concupiscence and pleasure, and because he is shown neither to have wished nor to have consented to those wishing. But he is at fault because he could be trapped, because he indulged in wine too much, and this not once, but he did it a second time.For instance, even Scripture seems to me to make excuse for him in a certain manner when it says, “For he did not know when he slept with them and when he arose.” This is not said of the daughters, who intentionally and cunningly deceive their father. He, however, was so senseless from wine that he did not know that he lay with his older daughter or with the younger.
Hear what drunkenness does. Hear what an outrage intoxication produces. Hear and beware, you who do not hold that evil to be a fault but practice it. Drunkenness deceives him whom Sodom did not deceive. He whom the sulphurous flame did not burn is burned by the flames of women.

As we have been able, we have carved out these explanations according to the spiritual understanding of Lot and his wife and daughters. We pass no judgment on those who have been able to perceive something more sacred from this text.But above, in the moral sense, we referred Lot indeed to the rational understanding and the courageous soul; but his wife, who looked back, we said to be the flesh given to concupiscence and pleasures. Do not, O hearer, receive these things carelessly. For you ought to watch lest perhaps even when you have fled the flames of the world and have escaped the fires of the flesh, even when you have risen above “Zoar, the city” that is “small and not small,” which is somewhere in the middle … you seem to have ascended to the height of knowledge, as to some mountain peak. Beware lest those two daughters lie in wait for you, who do not depart from you but follow you even when you ascend the mountain. They are vainglory and her older sister, pride. Beware lest with their embraces those daughters constrict you, deprived of sense and sleeping, while you seem neither to perceive nor know. They are called daughters because they do not come upon us from outside but proceed from us and from a kind of innocence, as it were, of our acts. Be vigilant, therefore, as much as you can, and watch lest you beget sons from these daughters, because those who have been born from them “shall not enter the assembly of the Lord.” But if you wish to beget, beget in the spirit, since “he who sows in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting.” If you wish to embrace, embrace wisdom and “say wisdom is your sister,” that Wisdom also may say of you: He “who shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.” Jesus Christ our Lord is this wisdom, “to whom be glory and sovereignty forever and ever. Amen.”

After these things, therefore, Lot ascends into the mountains, and there “he dwells in a cave,” as the Scripture says, “he and his two daughters.” The law also should be thought to have ascended, because an embellishment was added to it by the temple built by Solomon, when it became indeed “the house of God, a house of prayer.” Evil inhabitants, however, made it “a den of thieves.” Therefore “Lot and his two daughters dwelt in a cave.” The prophet evidently describes these two daughters saying that Oholah and Oholibah are two sisters, and Oholah indeed is “Judah” and Oholibah is “Samaria.” The people therefore divided into two parts made the two daughters of the law. Those daughters, desiring carnal offspring to be preserved and the forces of earthly dominion to be fortified by an abundant posterity, depriving their father of sense and making him sleep, that is, covering and obscuring his spiritual understanding, draw only carnal understanding from him. Then they conceive. Then they give birth to such sons as their father neither perceives nor recognizes. For it was neither the understanding nor the will of the law to beget carnally. But the law is deprived of its sense that such posterity might be begotten that “shall not enter the assembly of the Lord.” “For the Ammonites,” Scripture says, “and Moabites shall not enter the assembly of the Lord unto the third and fourth generation and forever.”

But I know that some, so far as the story pertains to a spiritual interpretation, have referred Lot to the person of the Lord and his daughters to the two Testaments. But I do not know if anyone freely accepts these views who knows what the Scripture says about the Ammonites and Moabites who descend from Lot’s race. For how will one be able to apply to Christ the statement that those who descend from his seed “shall not enter the assembly of the Lord” “to the third and fourth generation”?But we, as we are able to perceive, consider Lot to be a figure of the law. Let not the fact that the word law is declined in the feminine gender in Latin appear incongruous, since it preserves the masculine gender in Greek.
We consider his wife to represent the people who, after they had set out from Egypt and had been delivered from the Red Sea and the persecution of Pharaoh, as if from the fires of Sodom, again desiring the meat and “pots of Egypt and onions and cucumbers,” looked back and fell in the desert. Those people too became a memorial of concupiscence in the wilderness. In regard to that first people, therefore, it was there that the law, like Lot, lost and left his wife looking back.
Then Lot comes and dwells in Zoar, about which he says, “This city is small, and my life shall be saved in it; and it is not small.” Let us see, therefore, so far as it pertains to the law what “the city” is that is “small and not small.” A city is so named from the manner of life of the multitude, because it orders and holds together the lives of many in one place. These therefore who live by the law have a small and petty manner of life as long as they understand the law literally. For there is nothing great in observing sabbaths and new moons and circumcision of the flesh and distinctions between foods in a fleshly manner. But if someone should begin to understand spiritually, these same observances, which in the literal sense were small and petty, in the spiritual sense are not small but great.

We have read from the book of Genesis the story where it is related that after the appearance of the three men, after the destruction of Sodom and the salvation of Lot, either due to his hospitality or because of his kinship to Abraham, “Abraham departed thence,” the text says, “to the south” and came to the king of the Philistines. It is related also that he made an agreement with Sarah his wife that she should not say that she was Abraham’s wife but his sister. It is also said that King Abimelech took her, but God went in to Abim-elech at night and said to him, “You have not touched this woman, and I have not permitted you to touch her, etc.” But after this Abimelech gave Sarah back to her husband and at the same time rebuked Abraham for not having told him the truth. It is also related that, as a prophet, Abraham prayed for Abimelech, “and the Lord healed Abimelech and his wife and his handmaids.” And the omnipotent God was concerned to heal even the handmaids of Abimelech, “since he had closed up their wombs that they might not bear.” But they began to bear because of Abraham’s prayer.If anyone wishes to hear and understand these words literally, he ought to gather with the Jews rather than with the Christians. But if he wishes to be a Christian and a disciple of Paul, let him hear Paul saying that “the law is spiritual,” declaring that these words are “allegorical” when the law speaks of Abraham and his wife and sons. And although no one of us can by any means easily discover what kind of allegories these words should contain, nevertheless one ought to pray that “the veil might be removed” from the heart. “If there is anyone who tries to turn to the Lord”—“for the Lord is Spirit”9—the Lord might remove the veil of the letter and uncover the light of the Spirit. [Then] we might be able to say that “beholding the glory of the Lord with open face we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

I think, therefore, that Sarah, which means “princess” or “one who governs empires,” represents aretē, which is the virtue of the soul. This virtue then is joined to and clings to a wise and faithful man, even as that wise man who said of wisdom, “I have desired to take her for my spouse.” For this reason therefore God says to Abraham, “In all that Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice.” This saying, at any rate, is not appropriate to physical marriage, since that well known statement was revealed from heaven which says to the woman concerning the man, “In him shall be your refuge, and he shall have dominion over you.” If therefore the husband is said to be lord of his wife, how is it said again to the man, “In all that Sarah has said to you, pay attention to her voice”? If anyone therefore has married virtue, let him listen to her voice in all which she shall counsel him.Abraham therefore does not now wish that virtue be called his wife. For as long as virtue is called his wife, she belongs to him and can be shared with no one. And it is proper that until we reach perfection, virtue of the soul be within us and personal. But when we reach perfection so that we are capable also of teaching others, let us then no longer enclose virtue within our bosom as a wife but as a sister; let us unite her also with others who desire her. For to those who are perfect the divine Word says, “Say that wisdom is your sister.” In this way therefore Abraham too said Sarah was his sister.…
Nevertheless Pharaoh too once wished to receive Sarah, but he did not wish with a pure heart; and virtue cannot unite except with purity of heart. For this reason, therefore, Scripture relates that “the Lord afflicted Pharaoh with afflictions which were grievous and most severe.” For virtue could not dwell with a destroyer—for this is what Pharaoh means in our language.

But what is the meaning of that which Scripture adds: “And the Lord did not permit him to touch her”? If Sarah represents virtue and Abimelech wished to receive virtue “with a pure heart,” why is it said that “the Lord did not permit him to touch her”?Abimelech means “my father is king.” It seems to me therefore that this Abimelech represents the studious and wise men of the world, who by giving attention to philosophy, although they do not reach the complete and perfect rule of piety, nevertheless perceive that God is the Father and King of all things. Those, therefore, so far as it pertains to ethics (that is, moral philosophy), are acknowledged also to have given attention in some respects to purity of heart and to have sought the inspiration of divine virtue with all their mind and zeal. But “God did not permit” them “to touch” her. For this grace was designed to be delivered to the Gentiles not by Abraham, who, although he was great was nevertheless a servant, but by Christ.… Abraham was eager that what was said to him be fulfilled through and in himself, that “all the nations shall be blessed in you.” Nevertheless the promise to him is established in Isaac, that is, in Christ, as the apostle says: “He did not say, And to his seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, which is Christ.”26
Nevertheless “the Lord heals Abimelech and his wife and his handmaids.”

But it does not seem to me superfluous that mention is made not only of Abim-elech’s wife but also of his handmaids, especially in that place that says, “God healed them, and they bore children. For he had closed [their wombs] that they might not bear.” So far as we can perceive in such difficult passages, we think natural philosophy can be called Abimelech’s wife, but his handmaids represent the contrivances of dialectic which are diverse and various by virtue of the nature of the schools.Abraham, meanwhile, desires to share the gift of divine virtue also with the Gentiles, but it is not yet time for the grace of God to pass over from the former people to the Gentiles. For the apostle also, although under another viewpoint and figure, says nevertheless, “A woman is bound to the law so long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is loosed from the law so that she is no longer an adulteress if she is with another man.” First, therefore, the law of the letter must die so that, thus free at last, the soul may now marry the spirit and receive the marriage of the New Testament. Now this present time is the time of the calling of the Gentiles and of the death of the law, in which time free souls, at last loosed from the law of the husband, can marry a new husband, Christ.
But if you wish to be taught how the law is dead, look and see. Where now are the sacrifices? Where now is the altar? Where is the temple? Where are the purifications? Where is the celebration of the Passover? Is not the law dead in all these things? Or let those friends and defenders of the letter keep the letter of the law if they can.
According to this spiritual interpretation, therefore, Pharaoh, that is, an impure man and a destroyer, could not at all receive Sarah, that is, virtue. Later Abimelech, that is, he who was living purely and philosophically, could indeed receive her, because he was seeking “with a pure heart,” but “the time had not yet come.” Virtue therefore remains with Abraham; it remains with circumcision, until the time should come that in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom “dwells all the fullness of deity corporeally,” complete and perfect virtue might pass over to the church of the Gentiles.
At that time, therefore, the house of Abim-elech and his handmaids, whom the Lord healed, will bear sons of the church. For this is the time in which “the barren” will bear and in which “many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband.” For the Lord opened the womb of the barren and made it fruitful, so that she bears a nation “all at once.” But also the saints cry out and say, “Lord, from fear of you we have conceived in the womb and given birth; we have produced the spirits of your salvation on the earth.” Whence also Paul likewise says, “My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you.”15
Such sons, therefore, the whole church of God produces, and such it brings forth. For “he who sows in the flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption.” Now the sons of the Spirit are those about whom also the apostle says, “The woman shall be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and purity.”17
Let the church of God therefore in this way understand the births, in this way receive the procreations, in this way uphold the deeds of the fathers with a fitting and honorable interpretation, in this way not disgrace the words of the Holy Spirit with foolish and Jewish fables but reckon them to be full of honor, full of virtue and usefulness. Otherwise, what edification will we receive when we read that Abraham, such a great patriarch, not only lied to king Abimelech but also surrendered his wife’s chastity to him? In what way does the wife of so great a patriarch edify us if she is supposed to have been exposed to defilements through marital indulgence? These things are what the Jews suppose, along with those who are friends of the letter, not of the spirit.
But we, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual,” are made spiritual in deed and understanding in Christ Jesus our Lord, “to whom belongs glory and sovereignty forever and ever. Amen.”